Thank you to everyone who came along to our workshop this week! If you missed it fret not because here are the recipes that we discussed this week. Aside from tea recipes we also discussed the benefits of a couple of plants and how to grow them! Hopefully these plants spruce up your life making it tea-tastic!

Sage:

Sage is a culinary & medicinal herb that has a very distinct flavour and smell. It is a member of the mint family and is the largest genus (Salvia) having nearly 1000 species! This makes it very easy to find a Salvia plant no matter the season. Common sage is known as Salvia officinalis. Its consumption helps with digestion, colds, sweats and infections.

Sage is a perennial, evergreen herb and it likes the sun. It needs well-drained soil (so do NOT overwater it) and is easy to propagate from cuttings. Once placed in a new pot and watered, the cutting will grow roots (this usually takes up to 4 – 6 weeks). As soon as you see roots you must plant them in soil. Unlike other herbs, sage tastes based dried and is usually accompanied by rosemary and carrot, which helps in detering carrot fly.

River Mint:

1. Related to common mint, but an Australian local version.2. Used by Aborigines for medicinal purposes3. Embraced by the early settlers and added to their roast meats.4. Tea is good for easing the effects of colds5. Crushed leaves sniffed to relieve headaches6. Can also be rubbed on the skin for a repellent effect7. Great plant for a 'boggy' or waterlogged area in your garden! Likes moist soil.8. Sun or part shade9. Perennial10. Super easy to propagate! From a cutting or runner.11. Suggest growing in a pot due to vigorous nature and tendency to spread.12. Cut back hard when it gets leggy. Will bounce back!

Basil Mint:

1. Hardy perennial2. Super easy to grow!3. Grow in pots due to vigorous nature and tendency to spread4. Full sun or part shade5. Cut back hard when it gets leggy6. Good for pesto or in tea7. Medicinal uses: anti-inflamatory properties, antiseptic, antibacterial, eases digestion, helps with stomach issues, mouth wash, chewing leaves can alleviate flatulence.8. Smells a bit like basil!

Lemongrass:Lemongrass benefits:1.Used extensively in Thai, Cambodia and Laos Dishes2. A good mosquito Repellent3. Good for colds

Companion plant for lemongrass:Coriander, basil, thyme, mint, lemon verbena(pretty much all the plants in the garden!)Lemongrass and ginger herbal tea benefits:

Reducing inflammation

Both high in antioxidants

Possible cancer prevention

It is proven in animals that lemongrass reduce the risk of chronic disease and ginger protect against alcohol-related liver toxicity.

Lemongrass propagation:Lemongrass cutting and propagation can be done both from the supermarket ones and the your existing lemongrass in the garden.Follow those steps:

Use a knife, cut away the top part of a lemongrass and only leave the nice short bases (about 8-10cms).

Then remove the first outer later, also remove the harden and corky part near the root (you should feel slightly damp after the cut).

Get a glass jar, fill water only until 1/3 of the height of the stem. And then put the stem in. You could bundle up the lemongrasses if you’re doing multiple cuttings.

Leave the glass jar in a warm and sunny spot, possibly on the window sill.

Only top up water if it is not enough or change the water if bad smell comes out of the jar/root start to rot.

The root system will develop by itself in the water, ranging from one weeks to four weeks. Vegetative growth will also be seen from the centre of the stem.

Transfer the plants to a pot/garden bed after the root system develops. If you’re planting them in Melbourne, you do need to let them stay in a warm place and only transfer them until spring comes.

They’ll be ready to harvest in 4-6 months.

When harvest, just twist and pull the stalk.

Ginger:Ginger is a tropical plant with many benefits. Cuttings can be taken from the rhizome, not roots or leaves.Ginger grows in a well-watered, well-drained and loose soil. The best condition is full sun or part shade. It can grow both in a big container or a garden bed. Ginger loves fish emulsion, loves compost.Ginger are best planted in Spring, they takes 5 months to 1 year to harvest depends on climate conditions. In the case of Melbourne weather, it is recommended to keep them in a glasshouse/sunny indoor spot until weather gets really warm.Steps to follow to propagate ginger:

First take a block of ginger harvested from your garden or bought from the grocery place.

Identify the lumps/nodes on the block. These are where the new growth will be from!

Gently divide the block into small pieces such that each piece will have at least one lump/node on it.

Prepare soil and container/garden bed. Put the pieces into soil, with 20cms apart. Make sure that the lumps/nodes stay upright.

Leaves, stems and roots will grow from the rhizome.

Recipes we used:

Lemongrass and Ginger-still the winner, smells & taste the best

River mint, basil mint in the ratio 1:1 plus a hint of honey-tastes minty but good!

Sage plus a hint of honey-Very sagey but the strongness can be milder with honey

Welcome back! What better way to celebrate (or commiserate?) the beginning of a fresh new semester than with a fix of greenery at the garden?

To get the ball rolling at our welcome back event, garden coordinator Eleanor gave us a few tips on how to get started with gardening. The main message? Keep an eye on your plants! Observation is key to success - if you don't know what your plants are doing, you can't help them thrive. You should regularly check if they've got enough (or too much) water, if they're showing signs of nutrient deficiency or disease, or if there are any pesky critters trying to harm them. That's just the beginning, but it's a great place to start!

It's also super important to make sure you have good soil for your plant babies. That's why Joyce explained the importance of compost and gave attendees a quick tour of our compost system. Adding compost to your soil improves its nutrient and water holding capacity, which your plants love. If you garden in pots, make sure you use a good quality potting mix, ideally combined with organic matter (like compost!).

Eleanor also gave us a tour of the garden, pointing out the different sections (including perennials, annuals, natives, and sub-tropical plants), and explaining how it all works. We tasted some interesting things, including nasturtiums and native river mint (which tastes a bit like candy canes!). We followed this up with delicious homemade cake topped with flowers from the garden.

After the tour we did some general garden tasks, including weeding the natives bed, potting up warrigal greens for our farmers' market stall and feeding our worm farm. ​

Our last workshop digressed from gardening a little and focused on the art of fermentation. Although used traditionally as a substitute for refrigeration in order to increase the shelf life of veggies and fruit, it’s still a great way to introduce beneficial bacteria and different flavours into your fresh food.

This workshop we looked at making cider and kimchi. We had a little kitchen sesh at the lovely Food Co-Op that was followed by an Enviro Collective Play With Your Food sesh (think free vegan dinner cooked and eaten by you). To make your own cider or kimchi, check out the fermentation gardening guide up on our website!

Fresh off the fermenting - kimchi

Finishing off the semester, we’ve had a lot of fun with our workshops as well as learning from our new and less new coordinators. We hope you have too! In other news, we also generously got funding from the grounds team to install another two double shelved tables into our greenhouse as well as upgrade our irrigation system. We’ve now tripled the space we have to propagate and tidied the place up! Hopefully you’ll be seeing new residents at the garden soon that we’ve propagated in our now very spacious greenhouse. ​​

Dear fellow garden lovers,On May 19, 2017 we had our small space gardening workshop.Though it was hosted during lunch time, it's lovely that we still got quite a few participants turn up.There are various ways to do gardening in small spaces, in this workshop, we mainly focused on container garden.Our coordinator Joyce first started by talking some basic elements of container gardening, below are the main points of each elements to keep in mind!Sunlight:1.Most herbs need partial sun (roughly six hours per day).2.Most leafy veggies (lettuce, spinach, asian greens and Kale) can grow in light shade(roughly four hours per day).Type of container:1.There are no best types of containers. It all depends on the type of plants that you are aiming to grow! For example, root vegetables need deep containers while lettuces are fine with shallow soil. Soil and nutrients:1.Add coconut coir to increase water holding capacity (more relevant during hotter months)2. Use pea straw or broken autumn leaves as mulch to reduce water evaporation3.Use liquid fertiliser like Fish Emulsion or Nitrosoil as a supplementary way to add fertiliser( especially when you don't have sources to add regular compost)

Joyce talking how autumn leaves can be used as mulch(best utilisation of natural resources!)

For demonstration, we used herbs(mint, sage, rosemary and basil mint) as examples.All the herbs are fresh cuttings taken from the garden. A seed library box was the other option for the participants to play with. Some participants chose to plant some Bok Choy and lettuce.

Seed library and herb cuttings

Our participants

Since the weather is not in the most favourable condition, some of our participants chose to leave their new babies in our glasshouse near the system garden for a few weeks. Fingers crossed they will survive and become strong to be taken home for later.A little bit of harvest was then done after the workshop. There was nothing much to harvest in the autumn, but luckily our capsicum and rhubarb are ready! For the whole guide for container gardening, kindly refer to the gardening guide page for "balcony gardening" !http://mucgarden.weebly.com/gardening-guides.htmlThanks for reading and see you again in our next workshop!

We hope that everyone has had a splendid week and is enjoying the cooler days! This workshop we talked about guerilla gardening! To many, myself included, it was a foreign topic, something that I had never really understood or talked about.

So what is guerilla gardening?

A Guerrilla is, by dictionary definition, 'a member of an irregular, usually indigenous military or paramilitary unit operating in small bands in occupied territory to harass and undermine the enemy, as by surprise raids'.

Therefore, guerilla gardening can be summed up as the act of gardening on land that the gardeners do not have the legal rights to cultivate, such as abandoned sites, areas that are not being cared for, or private property.

It encompasses a diverse range of people and motivations, ranging from gardeners who spill over their legal boundaries to gardeners with political influences who seek to provoke change by using guerrilla gardening as a form of protest or direct action. This practice has implications for land rights and land reform; aiming to promote re-consideration of land ownership in order to assign a new purpose or reclaim land that is perceived to be in neglect or misused.

Guerrilla gardeners generally work under the cover of darkness, organising “troop digs” and “actions” where keen guerrillas meet and transform an ordinary looking public (or private) space with trees, shrubs, annuals and more. They engage in on-going watering, maintenance and rubbish removal on planted sites, much of this also done under the cover of darkness. The general public is often encouraged, by signage located in the gardens, to water a guerrilla garden as they pass or collect rubbish if required.

For gardening in areas where access is difficult or a long dig is unsuitable, seed bombs are used (sometimes called green grenades). They are essentially seeds and soil held in an explosive or degradable capsule.

Seed bomb from a previous workshop sprouting!

There are 6 different types of seed bombs - the Classic Clay Seed Ball (which we will be making), NYC Green Guerrilla Grenade, Kabloom “SeedBom”, Explosive Eggs, Seed Balloons and Seed Pills (for more information check: http://www.guerrillagardening.org/ggseedbombs.html)During our workshop this week, we tried our hand at making seed bombs! It was surprisingly easy and cheap. The steps are as follows:

If required add water as a binding agent (we did not need to do this!).

Keep rolling both materials till you have seed bombs that are roughly the size of a golf ball.

Once your balls are done, make a whole in the middle and add a teaspoon of seeds (we used a variety of flower seeds such as marigold, chamomile and wildflowers).

When it is completed leave to dry in an egg carton.

START YOUR OWN GREEN REVOLUTION!

Once the seed bombs have been planted, we wait for it to rain, which will wet the organic matter, swelling and forcing the bomb apart. The seeds will also soak up the rain and germinate into a lovely clay and compost soil. Hopefully in late spring and early summer the 'bomb site' will be filled with delightful flowers (remember to place the bombs in areas which will get enough light)!Hopefully the above information encourages you to get on the guerilla gardening bandwagon!Thank you to everyone who came out for our workshop and to those who stayed behind to help with our working bee! We really appreciate your support! Stay happy and remember to garden!

This week we spoke about one of our favourites, succulents. These thick and fleshy leaved plants are an easy one for those who are just starting out on their gardening ventures! Our coordinator, Christian, gave us a couple of tips on how look after these succulents:

Succulents usually grow in arid climates such as the desert/semi- desert, areas where there are high temperatures and very little rainfall. Therefore, they are suitable for indoor environments and they are very low maintenance.

Sunlight:

Place them near east facing windows

Beware of the heat, especially the afternoon summer sun

Water:

You should simulate natural conditions, i.e. completely wet soil which should be allowed to fully dry

Bigger plants can be left without water for longer periods of time

BEWARE OF OVERWATERING

Soil & Potting:

Choose well draining soil, i.e. gritty, sandy soil to ensure that the roots do not rot

Avoid pots with holes or water them less frequently

Use draining pots

Propagation (Stem):

Very easy

Leave a small stem (1 – 2 inches) to callous for about 1 – 3 days

Then plant them, new roots should form in approximately 6 weeks

Propagation (Leaves):

Remove leaf and stem

Lay flat on soil

Keep soil moist

Plant when roots form (6 – 8 weeks)

Propagating succulents

There you have it folks – a couple of simple and easy steps to ensure the life and health of your succulent! Happy planting!

Unsurprisingly, our herbal tea workshops tend to prove quite popular. Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics suggests that around 38% of Australians are tea drinkers, while it’s clear that tea culture is incredibly rich both here and around the world. When it comes to herbal tea, there seems to be a particularly potent set of associations attached; the soothing effects, potential medicinal properties, and cultural significance all mirror the similarly varied colours, flavours and aromas which make herbal teas so attractive. Along with the promise of cupcakes at our Food Co-op collaboration following the workshop, this made the herbal tea workshop an easy sell.

Of course, there are other good reasons to get involved in growing your own herbal teas. It is a wonderfully rewarding way to start your edible garden adventure, make the most of small spaces, and share the joys of home-grown produce. As we discussed during the workshop, growing, propagating, and harvesting some of the basics to kick-start your herb garden is very easy, and perhaps one of the simplest and cheapest ways to grow something edible under tricky conditions. If you don’t have much time to devote to maintaining plants, or else don’t have the space or conditions for much gardening, then a few choice herbs could be a fantastic option. Moreover, in addition to cooking, herbal tea is a rewarding way to enjoy and experiment with your edible plants.

Ticking all the boxes for looks, taste, smell, maintenance and growing conditions, mint is a go-to choice for tea. We began our workshop by talking a bit about the herb spiral which is a major feature of the garden, and mint was one of the first plants recognised by participants. Our herb spiral allows us to position different plants according to their needs. For example, plants like Vietnamese mint, which are used to a warmer climate and regular rainfall, work well higher up and against the black rocks which give shape to the bed and capture the heat well. Other mint varieties have spread around the spiral, and can be found amongst some of the other herbal tea favourites like thyme and lemon balm (helpful tip: if you’re growing mint at home, think about keeping it in a pot, as it can easily spread).

Herb spiral chats

After taking a look at the herbs, tasting and smelling along the way, we set about doing some propagation. This is another area which marks herbs (again, mint is a prime example) as a faithful garden standby; for many herbs, it is extremely easy to take cuttings. Those who joined us for the workshop got a chance to take a cutting home with them, which was often as simple as snipping the top of a rosemary stalk, clearing about two inches of leaves (leaving a few at the top) and sticking it in some potting mix. Likewise, mint and lemon balm are easy choices on which to find a bit of the stem good for sending new roots out and putting it in a pot. In this part of the workshop, one of the favourites was definitely river mint, a native Australian plant with a distinct, almost sweet taste (a bit like candy-canes, perhaps?).

River mint chats

After we had finished in the garden, we picked some of our favourite herbs and headed to the Food Co-op for some tea brewing and cupcake decorating. While there, the fabulous co-op volunteers supplemented our fresh herbs with some of their huge range of dried teas for people to experiment with their own blends. Adding to the delicious fun, they had also provided cupcakes for us to try out some herbal icings on; hibiscus made for a great natural food dye, while some other herb combinations proved flavourful successes.

This time at the coop was a great way to finish our herbal tea workshop, and emphasise the creative ways you can put garden produce to use. Hopefully all our volunteers were able to take their chosen herb home, tend to it, and will soon be enjoying their own tea. Australian Health Survey: Nutrition First Results – Food and Nutrients, 2011-12

This workshop we talked about one of our favourites: compost. Though it’s not the sexiest part of the garden, it’s an essential part of what makes it self-sustaining: it closes the loop, turning organic waste into organic dope. We talked about three kinds of composting: compost bins, worm farms and Bokashi bins.

Although they have different strategies and end products, they all produce plant goodness. Compost bins work by aerobic microbes breaking down kitchen waste to produce a concentrated source of plant nutrition, compost. Worm bins utilise worms to digest and convert kitchen waste into castings and liquid gold that are great, strong fertilisers. Bokashi bins offer a more compact composting solution that uses anaerobic fermentation to rapidly decompose kitchen waste into premature compost. For more info on composting, check out the gardening guide under gardening guides.

To compost or not to compost - that is the question

We also set up our worm farm after the worms went on a summer vacation to cooler hideouts - thanks to all our babysitters!

Setting up our worm farm

​Thanks to all our kitchen waste donors over the years. With your help, we’ve saved 650kg of kitchen waste going to landfill since we’ve started (and probably more due to data collection mishaps)! If you’re ever around, please also give the compost bins a good turn to add some oxygen in there. ​​

Two weeks before the break we had the wonderful Sam from St. Kilda Indigenous Nursery Co – operative (S.K.I.N.C) do a native workshop with us! She not only shared information about natives, she even donated some! It was very exciting (remember to check out our new additions)! Since there was a ton of information pertaining to the propagation/care/types of natives, we have collated everything into a list (below). Happy reading!

Sam from the St Kilda Indigenous Nursery Co-Op talking about the beautiful bounty she brought

​Woohoo! That’s everything! We hope you got through all that information! If you have any queries/require more information, remember to drop us a message on Facebook at “Melbourne University Community Garden”!Finally, we would like to thank all our volunteers who stopped by this week and lent a hand with digging, picking up leaves and cutting up branches. We truly appreciated your help and hope to see you there next time!Cheers,The MUC Garden Team